AR2A010 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY THESIS (2014-2015 Q3)

Student: Pietro Degli Esposti 4407849

Tutor: Carola Hein

The (MoMA's) NY Five experiment (and the failure of architecture as icon).

Structure of the thesis:
-Introduction
Chapter one: The Five and the MoMA
Chapter two: FIVE ARCHITECTS (book)
Chapter three: American critics on the Five
Chapter four: ( Peter Eisenman and the the IAUS Institute )
Chapter five: The Five in Europe
-Conclusions
Chapter one The Five and the MoMA
U.S.A. - New York, 1969: during a meeting organized by the Conference of Architects for the study
of Environment (CASE) at the Museum of Modern Arts the MoMA , Kenneth Frampton presents the
work of five architects: Peter Einsenman, Michael Graves, John Hejduk, Charles Gwathmey, Richard
Meier. That presentation will represent the creation of the NY Five group.
It is arguable that the MoMA of New York, since (few years after) it's foundation, represented a
unique watershed responsible for the creation of architectural movements.
For this reason, we can't understand the process and the reason of the formation of the Five
without considering the role and influences of the MoMA. In fact, it is possible to consider the Five
as a visible proof of the importance of the MoMA within/toward the architectural debate.
Founded as association with the goal of promoting modern art and aestetics in 1929, we can
consider the beginning of its enourmous influence starting from 1932, exactly the same year in
which it started to turn, for the first time, its attention on architecture with the exibition called
Modern Architecture: International Exhibition.
The exposition was curated by American architectural historian and critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock
and recently graduated Harvard University philosophy student (and later self-taught architect)
Philip Johnson and was the first MoMA's attempt to bring the European modernist architecture
practices to America.
If art and aestetics represented something more directed to an elite of enthusiastic, architecure
represented the tranlation of ideals and concepts in something familiar to many.
The focus on architecture enabled the possibility for the MoMA to engage theme of sociology,
politics and economy. In fact, it promoted modern movement as the German Bauhaus, a modernist
art, design and architecture school with functionalist principles and strong social and political
engagement, or the Congrs International dArchitecture Moderne (CIAM), an organization of
modernist architects who conceived of architecture and planning as a political and economic tool.
So the MoMA changed its role, born to be a magnifying glass focused on beautiful pieces of art
d'elite, it revealed its attitude in overlook towards the European innovations.
Architecture and later Urban planning became ambassadors of culture and ideals between Europe
and America. [ Beside that, during the war period, the Museum received many architects who
escaped from the Nazi regime. ] In this way the MoMA became to be understood as a strong

political and social tool of propaganda by its trustees and also by the U.S. Government itself.
The different orientations and contents of the expositions were carefully planned by the directors
of the Museum with often the collaboration of the Government in order to attract specific category
of people and focus the public attention towards certain issues.
MoMA's travelling expositions spreaded American principles of community planning around the US
and indeed across the world. In particular, during the war period the American interest on
planning and housing increased considerably.
In fact, MoMAs early calls for housing coincided with the US governments first involvement in
housing, the Emergency Relief and Construction Act in 1932, as a result of the American depression
and in conjunction with the emergence of planning as part of the war effort.
The historian, sociologist and philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford involved in MoMA's
expositions on housing from the 1930s on, argued that action must be political as well as
architectural, if the city is to be made habitable for most of its citizens (Museum of Modern Art
1932: 146), an approach that European public authorities had taken.
So, it is possible to state that in US the MoMA have greatly participated to the transformation of
the role of architecture expositions and the way architecture was perceived.
Architecture products, seen as physical pieces of art or as tools for ideal movements, thanks to the
MoMA, started to be seen as a combination of art, sociology and politics; thus they were
transformed from something beautiful, interesting, popular to something socially, economically
precious and revolutionary/relevant.
Among the innovations stimulated by the associated and coordinators of the MoMA, there is the
establishment of the phrase International Style indicating a major architectural style emerged in
the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of modern architecture in Europe.
In Europe the modern movement in architecture had been called Functionalism or Neue
Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), L'Esprit Nouveau, or simply Modernism [ and was very much
concerned with the coming together of a new architectural form and social reform, creating a more
open and transparent society. 1 ]
The English term International Style thus was originated effectively at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York during its first ever architectural exhibition, exactly the one of 1932 mentioned before.
In Johnson and Hitchcock's book The International Style: Architecture Since 1922, published
immediately after the end of the architectural exposition, the term International Style was used
again and definitively established.
As said at the beginning of the chapter, a key role for the formation of the Five group, was the
Conference of Architects for the study of Environment (CASE).
The association was co-founded in 1964 by one of the future NY Five members' Peter Eisenman
and was composed by a group of critics and theorists of architecture.
-Peter Eisenman, received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University in 1955, a
Master of Science in Architecture degree from Columbia University in I960 and an M.A. degree
(1962) and PhD (1963) from the University of Cambridge. He taught at the University of Cambridge
prior to joining the faculty at Princeton.
As a practicing architect, before 1964, he has been associated with the firms of Percival
Goodman, FAIA, in New York City and the Architects Collaborative in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
With the foundation of the association in 1964, Einseman had the aim to create an association able
to develop new ways of doing and looking at architecture.
One of the most revealing stories about the formation of the CASE is told by Stanford Anderson
Professor of History and Architecture and Head of the Department of Architecture (from 1991
1 Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
1999

through 2004) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (top row, far right). He tells: in
1964 Eisenman wanted to form an association of young architects interested in new ideas, he
convinced Princeton to put up some money, and invited for a weekend-long meeting a group that
included Anderson, Michael Graves, Robert Venturi, and a young Emilio Ambasz (see image
below: bottom row, fourth from the right, in jaunty Greek fishermans cap); on Sunday the question
came up whether that kind of group discussion should continue: Venturi immediately said, Well, is
it going to help my practice? Everyone agreed, No.
By the way, the group, will have a very important role within the architectural debate in U.S. as well
as being a prelude to the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), the New York think
tank that, from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, quite simply reshaped architectural
discourse in the United States. 2
In 1965, impressed by Eisenmans reflection on urbanism during______, the Museum of Modern Arts
director Arthur Drexler commissioned him to organize an exhibition.
In 1967, two years after, the exhibition entitled The New City: Architecture and Urban Renewal
was inaugurated by the New York City's Mayor Lindsay in 1967. 3
The importance of the exibition, in the words of Sidney J. Frigand, the former Deputy Executive
Director of the New York City Planning Commission, consisted in promoting rational land
development, integrated transportation, citizen participation, neighbourhoods with public facilities,
and housing with the goal of economic development in search of a new wholesome urban
environment. 4
For the exposition, Eisenman asked members of CASE who came from four universities, to
constitute teams to propose four designs for the redevelopment of Harlem. The four teams were
creating according to the different university of origin of the participants. Among the partecipants:
Jaquelin T. Robertson from Columbia, Colin Rowe from Cornell, Graves (in future will be member of
the Five) and Eisenman himself from Princeton.
All of them will be active protagonists during and after (with critics and publications) of another
significative CASE conference two years later.
This conference, will be exactly the key conference of 1969 that will represent the creation of the
group of the Five Architects of New York.
With the conference of 1969, the MoMA generated the icon of the Five in the same way as years
before, with the exposition of 1932, it created the name International Style.
In such wise, it is possible to confirm that effectively the MoMA is unique in the sense that actually
it shaped and named different architectural movements at numerous situations.
FIVE ARCHITECTS - book
In 1972, as consequence of the 1969 CASE Conference, the book Five Architects , ( Wittenborn &
Company editors) was published. The volume, presenting again the contents of the Conference,
contains a preface by Arthur Drexler (director of the MoMA), introduction by Colin Rowe and
comments by Kenneth Frampton, the same figures that curated the exposition on the Five three
years, before. Since that the conference of 1969 was organised as a meeting between the CASE's
members, we consider the volume as the effective presentation of the Five architects group to the
public.
The first page of the book is shaped by Drexler, with a preface of only five short paragraphs, he
writes the most direct and radical text of the volume. Drexler, introducing the Five as the
components of a New York school , gives the group the credit of being capable of continuing the
work that masters like Gropius, Breuer (and before them Richard Neutra) began with their first
2 The Architect's Newspaper magazine, march 13th 2011
3 Clement Orillard, Planning Perspectives
4 (Museum of Modern Art 1967: 7)

houses in the United States: the development through small scale residential work of a teachable
vocabulary of forms, but this time without some of the doctrinaire restrictions of the German
preoccupation with functionalism. 5 In fact, the preface underlines more the role of the Five as
creators of pure architecture without involvements in social or political reforms which were so
relevant in Europe During and after World War II.
According to Drexler, the Five group members had the talent to be an alternative to an architecture
of political romance and to create something that is only architecture, not the salvation of man and
the redemption of the earth. 6
The introduction by Colin Rowe, consists in a research of the effective meaning of modern
architecture, a comparison between the original theories of the architects and the result of their
architecture comparing specifically Europe and U.S. Rowe discusses also about the social purpose
that modern programs intended to have arguing that modern architecture should be regarded as
no more than the inevitable result of twentieth century circumstances (so, as result of its time).
In line with Drexler's thoughts, Rowe writes that enthusiasm for the new innovations and the
tendencies of the period leaded the architects to be transformed in terms of its image, as the
leader and the liberator of mankind. 7
Rowe states that when modern architecture became proliferated throughout the world, became
cheaply available, standardized and basic, then it lost its noble social vision, the building became
no longer a subversive proposition about a possible Utopian future. It became instead the
acceptable decoration of certainly non-Utopian present.
The great dream of revolution of modern architects had thus both succeeded and failed.
Comparing Europe and America, Rowe writes that while regarding to the first, it is possible to
argue that modern architecture was conceived as an adjunct of socialism and sprang from
approximately the same ideological roots as Marxism, in the latter modern architecture was very
unequipped with any such implicit social or political origins. The circumstances derived by World
War I and the Russian Revolution which qualified European production were not present in
America, consequently the original meaning of modern architecture in Europe and U.S. was
inevitably different.
Continuing the reflection about modern architecture and its influences in social revolutions, Rowe
denies the importance of the Architecture-Revolution confrontation, if it may have had a certain
relevance in Europe, it surely didn't have it in America.
When in the Nineteen-Thirties, European modern architecture came to infiltrate the United States,
it was introduced as simply a new approach to building and not much more. 8
Developing these arguments, it seems that Rowe wanted to explain or even justify the Five's
completely indifference towards any social issue.
Besides that, the introduction concludes with a series of acknowledgements by the author, in fact
he underlines how modern architecture is characterised by a variety of alternatives and different
ramifications that are still difficult to associate each others. In a similar way, he underlines how it is
difficult to generalize the work of the five architects illustrated in the book. Again, for these reasons
Rowe writes that we should not then be too ready to impute charge of irresponsibility to the group.
In order to communicate the difficulty to have a clear objective point of view on modern
architecture and on the Five, he considers appropriate to conclude the very last part of his largely
negative introduction 9 with a series of questions about the role, responsibility and meaning of
architecture.

5 Five architects, Wittenborn editor, 1972, p.1.

6 Five architects, Wittenborn editor, 1972, p.1.
7 Five architects, Wittenborn editor, 1972, p.3.
8 Five architects, Wittenborn editor, 1972, p.4.
9Five architects, Wittenborn editor, 1972, p.7.

----> comments on Five architects' text by Kenneth Frampton

CRITICS ON FIVE - AMERICA

-Beside representing the creation of the fame of the Five architects as group, the publication
became the starting point and the focus for a strong wider debate about modern architecture, first
in America and then in Europe.
IAUS
[ Then, in 1967, Petr Eisenman founded the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS). ]
Oppositions journal
- five archiects as introduction Opposite reader: Five architects can be seen as a PREQUEL to
opposition itself . . .

Annotated Bibliography:
- Five architects, Wittenborn editor, 1972. (English language) :
The book, edited as an in-depth analysis of the conference in 1969 at MoMA of New York held by
Kenneth Frampton, analyse and comments the work of the Five architects group composed by:
Peter Einsenman, Michael Graves, John Hejduk, Charles Gwathmey, Richard Meier. Beside having
comments by Peter Frampton himself, it contains a significant introduction by Arthur Drexler
(Director Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA New York) and the introduction by Colin
Rowe. The ensemble of these comments by some of the most relevant scholars of that time, makes
possible to have a clear idea of the consistency of one of the main American school of thought
about the Five.
- Five architects NY, Officina Edizioni Roma, 1976. (Italian language, no English translation) :
This volumes was written in occasion of the VII Exposition of Architecture organised by the Faculty
of Architecture of Napoli (Napoli, Castel Nuovo, January 31th February 14th 1976).
With the introductive text Les bijoux indiscrets, Manfredo Tafuri analyses and criticizes strongly
the five architects. The comparison between this and the previous book it's extremely significant to
study the two different (American and European) schools of thought. [so what are the differences?]
- Oppositions, selected readings from the Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 1973-1984.
(English language) :
It contains different articles wrote time by the within Oppositions , an architectural journal
founded by Peter Eisenman in 1973. Particularly relevant for the thesis is an article wrote by
Manfredo Tafuri where he introduces to the American panorama some of his theories. [important,
investigate]
- Five on Five, on Architectural Forum journal, May 1973. (English Language)
Series of articles published on the journal: Architectural Forum. Five critics of architecture
comments directly the Five architects underlining the weaknesses and contradictions of the group.
It represent a significative debate critics versus architects.
- Should Anyone Care about the New York Five?... or about their Critics, the Five on Five? , on
Architectural Record journal, February 1974. (English language):
Article wrote by Paul Goldberger on Architectural Record journal. With this rather provocative text

he questions the critics and the architects, he wants to debate the effective importance of the
phenomenon of the Five. [how does that sit within the Europe/US debate?]
- Architecture's '5' Make Their Ideas Felt, The New York Times, November 26th 1973. (English
language):
Another incisive article by Goldberger published on The New York Times in 1973.
- ARCHITECTURE VIEW; A Little Book That Led Five Men to Fame, published on The New York
Times, February 11, 1996 by Paul Goldberger. (English language):
Several year after his previous article on the Five, Paul Golberger published again in The New York
Times on the group of the Five
- The transnational building of urban design: interplay between genres of discourse in the
Anglophone world, pubblished on Planning Perspectives journal by Clment Orillard, 2014

- Il progetto storico di Manfredo Tafuri, CASABELLA n.619-620, January 1995. (Italian with English
translation):
Series of articles published in CASABELLA dedicated to Manfredo Tafuri. The central point is the
role of history in architecture from Tafuri's point of view. It can be relevant for the thesis to develop
the discussion about the orientation that architecture had in the past and the one that should have
in future.